OCZ SSD 32GB Solid State Hard Disk

Introduction

Hard Disk, Hard Disk, Hard Disk. Over the past 10 years since I bought my first PC you've served me well. Sure there was one time when I knocked my tower unit off the desk and you decided to wipe off all my college work along with a years worth of files downloaded on my 56k modem, but hey it was my fault - I should have backed up.

I could probably also accuse you of being a bit slow and noisy at times, but in all fairness you've always grown to accommodate my ever expanding music, games and *ahem* movies collection. Sure, maybe I didn't treat you to a defragmentation as often as I should, but those frequent clicks, ticks and crunching noises of your heads moving back and forth gave me reassurance and added to the whole PC experience.

However my friend, your days might well be numbered. See, there's a new kid on the block called SSD. He's fast, doesn't mind being knocked about a bit and runs cooler than a cucumber. Sure he's still quite small and I nearly had to sell a kidney to buy him, but PC's are all about silicon and GHZ these days and those old mechanical motors of yours are getting quite dated. But before I tell you to pack your bags and demote you to my "storage drive", I'm going to give you one last chance to redeem yourself....

SSD for a long time has been many enthusiasts wet dream. The thought of being able to replace that mechanical hard disk with a circuit board full of NAND chips that have almost zero latency and a sustainable read/write speed across the entire disk seems to be the missing part of the high-performance computing puzzle. Today we're going to be taking a look at a 32GB SSD drive from well known performance memory manufacturer OCZ. With an SATA-II interface and up to 100MB/s read rate, the drive certainly promises to be blazingly fast.

Of course what good would any review be without some stiff competition! While the OCZ SSD will most definitely leave most normal hard disks begging for mercy, Western Digital have been manufacturing a range of prehistoric beasts under the name of Raptor for quite some time. Their most recently released Velociraptor hard disk features a 10,000RPM rotational speed, 16MB cache and 300GB storage space all served up on a 2.5" platter - making it an absolutely perfect candidate for a head-to-head battle.

But before we get down to business, let's get up-close and personal with OCZ's shiny bit of kit...

On a game like Footy Manager, what does it require the most. I know the game reads from a massive database but then it is also continually writing updated info. Obviously the CPU needs to be good for crunching but would a hdd be slowing down performance in a game like that?Quote

Great review m8, I wouldn`t stick it in a laptop myself as again it`s too small - perhaps a counterpart but then the price goes up again.

A desktop OS only drive tho, they`d be tremendous.

Price is a big thing for me, and I personally think they`re going to be too high for too long b4 something else comes out to take them out of the market.

Even with platter drives coming down in cost, as if a 2T drive is on the horizon, they`ve got alot of ground to make up for me.

Price ? I don`t think they`ll get much cheaper. Memory chips for the size required for a drive are never that cheap on the market. (just imagine trying to build a similar ssd with a blank pcb and filling it urself... hmmm there`s an idea.. a pcb with 10 ddr & 10 ddr2 slots u can stick in all ur left over memory in..)Quote

Rast.. Ya say that by the time they get to a decent level something else will more than likely have come along. But how long have we been using platter hdds now? They are still in their infancy and memory chip prices are dropping very fast. I remember when a 4GB USB stick would set ya back £80.. Get them for less than a tenner now.Quote

I dunno. I mean it`s one thing to produce on a small scale, but to bring something the likes that will replace harddrive tech on a gig for gig scale, I don`t feel the memory chips are going to get to a cheap enough level.

Manufacturers are also reluctant to produce older memory chip when the tech moves forward. The pricing of the likes of PC100/133 memory aint as cheap as it once was, similarly when DDR3 becomes the main memory brand, DDR2 isn`t going to be as cheap or available as it is now. Then ofc DDR will be in the same situ as PC100/133.

It`s plain that many memory chips get bought on a bulk scale in order to make the likes of usb pen drives. If as many ssd manufacturers turn up as there are usb drive makers, then perhaps the same chip prices could be compared. But from what I see in this review, they`re using new 4G memory chips, which are different to those used in pens afaik.

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